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Vayardyio
Overview =Setting= Vayardyio is an extra-terrestial language spoken by the humanoid population in the so-called Northwestern quadrant of the Great Continent on the planet called Tolouga (in V.: meaning 'world' or 'living space'). Tolouga circles its sun in more-or-less earthlike circumstances and (mostly due to lack of imagination of their creator) its animate species look and behave quite familiar to us. Vayardyio is the mother tongue of the Vayardi people (they who inhabit the country of Vayardo). Native speakers number approx. 49 mi. It is seen as the sole representative of the Western branch within the Coumrillian language family. Two more branches of this family exist in neighbouring countries: the Northern (or ‘High’) branch, consisting of Tozurian, Chirchian and Gabilian, and the Southern branch, with Avessite, Alemnic and Silmerian. All languages show a strong lexical and syntactical relationship, whereas rather prominent differences occur in the phonology and phonetics. Vayardyio shares with the Northern branch-languages features like a fully active nominal and pronominal declension in three cases, while it still displays rare phenomena other languages have lost, such as the use of a ‘4th person’ (often called: obviative). Also, only Vayardyio retains the original five verbal moods of the Old-Coumrillian root language. Vayardyio languages history tracks back some 2000 years, dating to the westward movement of Coumrillian tribes from the northern plains even before the Classical Civilisation of Coumrillia came to full bloom. Therefore, Vayardyio lexicon displays quite a few words and meanings which differ from words in all other modern Coumrillian languages, more heavily influenced bij the Classical Coumrillian speech. Here is an example of regular language change (incl consonant shifts) in several Coumrillian languages: ____________________________________________________________________________ Development of Coumrillian root words in various modern Coumrillian languages: '' Coumr Gabilian Tozurian Vayardyio Avessitian Alemnic (meaning in English) 'xεm '' heum him yémo jem jemon 'human creature, man '' 'xεddün ''' ' houd hüd yido judij' jid' '' year '' xuaidas '' '''gaud huadi ada adea ade ''water '' ''' ''xuonnas '' 'hanna heni ana ană ana '' '''woman ' ''' '' ''bhæstarau hestre hestur ésiara festere feste ''to do, make '' phaiger '' '''fegru fegur figro fijere fejre ''blue'' ___________________________________________________________________________________ Typology Vayardyio is a typical SOV-language, in which fronting constituents to the 'left' (head) of the sentence marks topicalization. Typically, negation is expressed by fronting the verb, preceded only by the general negation marker yé. The language is inflecting, according to regular patterns: declension of nouns and pronouns, conjugation of verbs, on a nominative-accusative basis. Verbs show five moods and display active and passive voice; nouns are distinguished by gender: -o class (male), -a class (female) while -o class being the default type. An earlier gender distinction in animate - inanimate has left only some remote traces in the language. Although being a SOV-language in which the verb as a rule is sentence-final, Vayardyio retains prepositions in stead of postpositions, and modifiers generally preceed their heads in an apparent violation of the well-known language universals. Phonology Vayardyio phonemic inventory consists of a set of six vowels: a, e, o, i, u and /schwa/; the latter only appears in inflected endings. It is obligatory in V. that all (native) words end vocalic; also words rarely begin with /i/, /o/ and /u/ . Furthermore, strict rules inhibit the forming of allophones. Diphthongs are non-existant too: between any pair of vowels a pause is always observed. The consonants are: b, k, d, f, g, ç, j, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, θ, v, z. Of these, /b/, /j/ and /z/ are sparsely distributed. Written č represents the dental fricative /θ/ as in English or Spanish. The two glides /j/ and /ç/ (palatalized) are written gi+(vowel) an y 'respectively in “terrestial” orthography; whenever g preceding i+(vowel) should not be pronounced /j/, it is written 'ğ. In scheme, the consonants are distributed like this: ____________________________________________________________ '' bilabial labio- dental palatal velar '' '' dental'' '' '' stop p b t d k γ ' ' fricative f v s θ z ç nasal m n ŋ ' ' liquid l r glide w j ____________________________________________________________ Several consonant clusters are allowed at the beginning of words, including clusters like /sf/, /sm/, /scr/, /spr/ or /str/, but the language as a whole favours syllable formation of the type CV, CVC or VC. Base words mostly have no more than three syllables, however throug inflection and suffixing, strings up to six syllables can exist. =Basic Grammar= the verb In Vayardyio, the verb is a very significant category. Two conjugations exist: verbs ending in ''-ani and those ending in ''-ara. The latter comprises all transitive verbs, verbs ending in ''-ani'' without any exception are intransitive. Both conjugations differ only slightly, however. All verbs are conjugated for tense Present and past tense are the most marked. Actions or events in near future are mostly expressed in present tense, while a choice of adverbs make the future notion more specific. Future tense proper in modern Vayardyio actually has merged with the optative mood ''(see below). ''aspect Vayardyio retains the original Coumrillian three-way aspect system: imperfect, progressive/durative, and perfect. Durative is widely used, much like in English, to express ongoing actions, mostly with no specific relation to time or completion. mood Any verb comes in five moods: indicative, subjunctive/conjunctive, hortative, potential/optative, infinitive. Hortative is used to express imperative statements and orders; potential-optative, which signals a (future) possibility, has become the means to express all actions or events which are likely to happen in near or more remote future. voice Passive and medio-passive are fully developed in terms of morphology, but tend to be avoided in everyday speech. A trend towards a more analytic realization of passive or medio-passive voice is attested, mostly by using the copula stiara (to be (brought) in a state) + participle. the noun; article, adjective Here is a table of nominal declensions. Nouns come in two genders, those ending in –o or –i; and those ending in –a; there are three cases: Nom = nominative case (1st )(subject) Obl = oblique case (2nd)(direct and indirect object) Gen = genitive case (3d)(genetive proper and partitive); '' ''the use of the partitive construction is widespread: mo tanilou i adi sépe '- he drank a cup of water 'épia adi sépe '''- he drank some water '''soio ado lisépita - he has drunk all the water Note that when a part of speech or NP is negated, it also figures in the 3d case. Hence, the preposition '''fata '('without')'' '''governs the 3nd case, while almost all other prepositions govern the 2nd: '''O ano giésitia - I have seen the woman Yé i ani giésitia '- I have ''not seen the woman 'Fata casyi acastio gravanye '- he vanished without leaving a trace (lit.: 'without a trace leaving he disappeared') Note that adjectives agree in gender and case with nouns. When the noun is definite, the adjective preceeds it. If it is indefinite, the adjective follows the noun; in this case, inflected endings on the adjective are less marked. Sequences of adjectives can be ranged to both sides of the noun, depending on their salience: 'Ma séfia frissa Vayardya '- a young Vayardese girl 'Mo acadio paravou fario troge '- he bought a new red car (his old car was red as well) '''Mo paravou fario acadio troge ''- he bought a new red car ''(he bought a new car which -accidentally- was red) Namio acadio paravou troge ''- he bought this (particular) red car Nominal declension: noun, adjective, article A. definite example: 'é négo cadino (the big town); 'gia tira magissa '(the small village) singular 1e nv. é négo cadino gia tira magissa 2e nv. o négio cadinou o tirio magisso 3e nv. i négi cadini i tiri magissi plural '' 1e nv. nie négie cadinéne ge tirie magisse 2e nv. ne négine cadinone se tiride magissase 3e nv. ni négi cadinéni si tirise magisséi ' B. indefinite ''singular 1e nv. mé cadino négo ma magissa tira 2e nv. mo cadinou négio mo magisso tirio 3e nv. mi cadini négi mi magissi tiri plural '' 1e nv. cadinéne négi magisse tiri 2e nv. cadinone nége magissase tire 3e nv. cadinéni négi magisséi tiri pronouns These are inflected mostly like adjectives. Personal pronouns are commonly omitted in spoken language and in written language also. Sometimes however, the personal pronouns are retained for stress or in literal and poetic purposes. In third person singular as well as plural, natural gender is observed. Also there is a third person 'unpersonal' (or inanimate) pronoun which is closely related to the definite article and which is also used as a 'filler' particle. A very specific feature of Vayaryio is the use of 'proximate' and 'obviative' forms, the latter mostly referred to as 'fourth person'. 'obviative' forms are used whenever two (or more) persons are mentioned in one sentence, to avoid ambiguity. For example: O giarou giéso - ''I saw the man '''Ono giéso ''- I saw him'' Etou 'giése ''- he (prox.) saw him (obv.) Here is the full set of personal pronouns: adverbs Adverbs are not inflected for case or gender. They do not differ formally from adjectives, except manner adverbs. These take the suffix '''-ima to mark them as modifier of a verb: Gia frissa ofra nia '- she is a careful girl '''O salmou ofrima scéname '- he was carefully (warily) climbing the tree ['the tree 2nd case careful-ly he-was-climbing'] Some adverbs occur together with a preposition to form a fixed expression: 'Ono da mélio vali '- he fares badly him for worse is doing/happening' Scores of adverbs behave more or less like particles, like 'ya '- somewhat 'alla '- once 'ita '- soon, shortly '''ya si - surely etc. conjunctions prepositions particles affixation syntactical matters =Dictionary= men and family body parts pronouns and prepositions geographical features some important adjectives and adverbs colours some important verbs swadesh list =Example text= '' '' Soie yémine isméie si eca télénissou sé stodissou étio progémintie stiari. Ini a rato sé ' All creatures free and in dignity and right equal born they-stand. To them reason and '''assonariou légita, si giésa atoa éca livastissou dissarnara sédassire. ' conscience it-has-been-given, and in-face each-other in solidarity behave they-should. '' '' `All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.` He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, ''Té solio asti rédénou i logisi apprédisto, scaltésata pandame, On brown forest floor leaves covered-with, stretched-out he was laying down his chin on his folded arms, alta pouta té rémase rédiviste,' his chin on (at) arms folded, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees si élato sig’ono é gialvo eca salmini otrélase velantame.' and high above him the wind in trees tops it-was-blowing. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; Gie andri réna éca fiğio lama pandame, régantima élése; '' The mountain side in-place-that he was lying, gently(mildly) sloped; But below it was steep and he could see ''tasima topa séda riva nie sé giésara sate but more-remote (yonder) steep it-was and see he-was-able the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. i barnisti vasi alvisso paréči o calisso andanio. (E. Hemingway; For whom the bell tolls; opening sentence) Note: of course on Tolougia no pine-trees grow, so neither is the forest floor covered with needles. Literal translation is added in the third sentences Category:Languages Category:Alien languages